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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23814022">the road to hell</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/TolkienGirl/pseuds/TolkienGirl'>TolkienGirl</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>All That Glitters Gold Rush!AU: The Full Series [227]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angband, Colonialism, Gen, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, POV Second Person, Racism, Villains</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-04-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-04-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 15:20:02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,000</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23814022</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/TolkienGirl/pseuds/TolkienGirl</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Everyone makes a defining choice. The question is whether you survive it.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>All That Glitters Gold Rush!AU: The Full Series [227]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1300685</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>19</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>the road to hell</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>i. Ulfang</em>
</p><p>Rumil was intelligent, for a slave.</p><p>You didn’t think them less than human, just for the color of their skin. You didn’t care. And as it was, in the world, your opinion was a small matter. You’d rather have your weight in gold, than your judgment valued.</p><p>You came to Mithrim not long after the troops moved west. You had had a falling out with the miners up North, and the troops had no intention of making life better for a man such as yourself. Like you, they weren’t overburdened with scruples.</p><p>Unlike you, they didn’t traffic much in information. They thought what you had to sell was gossip. Mumbling women’s talk.</p><p>Just as well you had word on <em>them</em> to give Rumil. And that you were long gone when the face-carving fur-trader arrived.</p><p>The rest is your story, fit to tell no one but a man out of myth. He seems all right and all wrong on the mountain, dark as night, deathly calm.</p><p>You see that calm splinter and break.</p><p>Over <em>Feanor’s</em> son.</p><p>Rumil had never been a threat. His kind never were. They had too little power, in the world’s eyes. No one else’s eyes could see a way to victory. Feanor <em>had</em> been a threat, until he was a dead man.</p><p>You watch Maedhros, skinned, plucked and still fighting, and a tremor of wonderment passes through your bones.</p><p>He’s fierce, for a slave.</p><p>You see the man in Melkor Bauglir, and find him weaker for it. Not a mountain after all.</p><p>You kill Rumil because you have half a thought of striking off on your own. Not being beholden. Demanding your weight in gold because your power is valued.</p><p>The tremor kills <em>you</em>.</p><p>
  <em>ii. Murphy</em>
</p><p>You never saw the little creature till he was crawling.</p><p>She was dead by then.</p><p>Still—</p><p>
  <em>Aye, that one was born of the wildcat. Not much of a cat himself, though. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Whines like one.</em>
</p><p>Laughter. A living infant is pitiful—absurd in a place like this. He had a flat-faced woman chasing after him. He was spindly, but not sickly. At least, you didn’t think so.</p><p>You spat tobacco, keeping your distance.</p><p><em>Maybe a boy raised up will be useful,</em> you said. You’d rather they didn’t kill him, all told.</p><p>
  <em>Boy? More of a frog if you ask me. Look how he’s dragging his legs.</em>
</p><p>You hadn’t cared for her, after she came to you. Before, there’d been a thrill; a chase. After, she moved her limbs just as you ordered. There wasn’t much resistance. Only the smallest sounds.</p><p>Then she’d grown fat with child.</p><p>You scratch the back of your neck. You fill your lip with more chaw.</p><p>You don’t ever call him <em>yours</em>.</p><p> </p><p>The smithy burns. The camp burns. You manage to snag a horse, which is more than the twisted corpses can do, more than the twisted, moaning bodies that will soon be corpses shall ever do.</p><p>Who knew the Red Devil had it in him?</p><p>You’d thought him a dandy at first, wet behind the ears and with no understanding of what men would do to a pretty thing lost in world—</p><p>And then he was broken. He moved his limbs just as he was ordered.</p><p>But after—after! He smoked the whole place to ash and blood.</p><p> </p><p>You aren’t thinking of the frog-legged brat when you ride for the second tower of smoke. It is only that you see him running on all fours through the brush. You see him because you are high and he is low, and you—choose.</p><p>You call a halt, and the beast halts.</p><p>Scrambling down, you give chase, and the boy isn’t fast enough.</p><p>You don’t even know what you want with him.</p><p>But most people would say he was your son.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>iii. Goodley</em>
</p><p>You ran. You came back.</p><p>Some men would have chosen differently.</p><p>“Goodley, was it? Do you know where Cosomoco is now?”</p><p>You don’t know who Cosomoco is.</p><p>“Gothmog,” Melkor Bauglir says. His right hand is bandaged and fastened with straight silver pins.</p><p>“Ah.” You’re not one to have a rise gotten out of you. All the release you need comes from the crack of the stick, the blow of a boot. “I don’t know, sir. He’s up and gone. Far, I reckon.”</p><p>“You reckon.” Bauglir’s fingers are long, and almost as pale as the bandages. There is a ring on his left hand—a wedding band.</p><p>Funny. It doesn’t fit with him. Like those silver spurs Gothmog kept in his chamber.</p><p>You give it no more thought.</p><p>“I’ll pay you,” he says.</p><p>For one bright moment you think he means to hunt down Red. Red got away, after all.</p><p>Less a hand.</p><p>You’ve had him under <em>your</em> hands. A good, sick, hot feeling in your blood.</p><p>“Pay me?”</p><p>“Manners are lost on you, it appears,” Bauglir says, with a thin-lipped smile. “But since you have returned, you are in a distinct position of advantage. I shall be blunt, my good Goodley, as you are blunt. Are you familiar with Ancalogon?”</p><p>The coal empire.</p><p>“Yes.” A pause, then, “Sir.”</p><p>“It’s headed by a woman.” He waves the hand with the ring. “Bless us, I know. When shall the ladies ply the trades they were born for. You’ll find Madame McCalagon…inapposite, to the gentler occupations.”</p><p>“Very well.”</p><p> </p><p>He hands over money. He hands over a boy. You’re not to beat this boy. You’re not to coddle him. You’re to bring him, unharmed, to a new empire.</p><p>Likely Bauglir thinks it will save his.</p><p>You do not know enough to care.</p><p>The boy’s name is Maeglin.</p><p>You do not care enough to remember.</p><p> </p><p>But unlike so many who have gone before you, to the outer reaches of gold and goodwill, you kept to the leash that seemed right to you. Even Gothmog slipped it in the end. You’re not sure if that will bring him fortune.</p><p>Surely, the heavy wallet at your side is the answer.</p>
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